"I don't deny that there are good tieflings," though he has his suspicions about anyone in this man's adventuring party, "but, in the end, few enough that a general policy of exclusion still seems worthwhile. If everyone with Infernal blood had been removed from power in the old days, we wouldn't be in this mess."

"If you don't believe you can make a good country out of Evil people, Archduke, I think you'll have some trouble adjusting to Cheliax."

"I certainly don't think you can do it with Evil rulers. But that's the business of the Committee on Excising Diabolism, not this one." Given the composition of this committee he's not going to get this part of his position into its recommendations, so he'll wait and propose it on the floor as a compromise when the rest of the convention inevitably rejects whatever it does come up with.

"Absalom is a wonderful city that is trying its best to be cosmpolitan, a city for all people. I don't think Cheliax is a country for all people nor should it try to be."

"Long long long time ago, Chelish--ruler--meet--strix--ask if want be part of kingdom, strix say no, ruler say, okay, we make peace. Peace not last, but--if strix properly part of country, pay taxes, should be improvement on, not part of kingdom, have peace. Not sure Brastlewark situation is that?" 

So 'taxes' are paid only if you're part of Cheliax and ruled by them? They're not paid in exchange for peace, you can have peace without taxes? That sounds great!

"Does anyone remember why the peace with the strix broke down?"

"Brastlewark governs itself internally but pays taxes to Cheliax, yes. We don't allow in tax collectors. The city government sets aside a portion of the taxes we collect to pay our count, duke, and Queen. As long as they receive the set amount of taxes, we can collect it however we like. Which is good, because gnomes are naturally suited to experimentation on such things."

"The main thing that taxes pay for," he says, since probably none of the nonhumans understand this, "is defense. If a place is part of Cheliax and pays taxes, even if it governs itself, then we will defend it if it is attacked by humans from outside Cheliax, or by a dragon, or by devils from a portal to Hell, such as currently plagues the Whisperwood. Now, Élie Cotonnet may choose to close the portal to Hell in the Whisperwood out of the Goodness of his own heart, or out of his hatred of Hell, but if he did not, then Cheliax would pay him to, because the Whisperwood is—at least currently—part of Cheliax, and is under the Queen's protection. If a people wants to be totally free of Cheliax and pay no taxes, I am not necessarily opposed, but then they will not have the Queen's protection."

"I would oppose that. 'Defense' cannot be easily divided up and parceled out only to those who pay for it. A wall around a city protects every home within - if one man says 'I have no need of your protection, I will pay no tax' his home is still safe. In the same way, when a band of marauders comes out of the mountains to steal and burn, we cannot simply direct them to the farms that have chosen not to pay their due. Portals to Hell are archmage business of which I know little, but the everyday work of defending the borders and the forest bounds saves all of the country or none of it."

"Yes, we certainly cannot make that arrangement for individual farms. I doubt we could even make it for the forests. I was speaking mostly to the delegate from the strix, who if my knowledge serves me live on a remote coast little inhabited by humans."

"I see no reason the strix could not be independent, so long as they are not raiding and permit merchants through the passes. Few people who can't fly want to live in the mountains, and it's not like much grows there." The problem, implicitly, is the raiding and attacking travelers.

"Have more problems humans want mines than humans want farms. But, also, good place raise sheep." 

"If you choose to remain Chelish citizens, then Cheliax could make a law obliging anyone who wanted to mine on your land to seek your permission and pay you a portion of what they take. I don't know what current Chelish law on that looks like; most places that are good for mining don't have many humans living there. If you were independent, you could of course make your own laws, but humans might be less likely to obey them willingly."

Nod. "Right now, own laws, humans not obey. Mostly. Pezzack fine lately." 

"I think we ought to make a distinction between races that are already part of Cheliax, but might wish for independence, and races that are already de facto independent, and have their own governments, but might wish to be under our protection; and we ought to decide which races are which. Of the races represented here, I think halflings belong to the former category, forest people, gnomes, and strix the latter, and orcs are more complicated, since there are both orcs that live among humans and orcs that live apart from humans."

"I don't think the forests need protection usually. Or, not against other humans. A portal to Hell sounds terrible and I don't want to speak for the Whisperwood, but if the taxes would pay for... paying an archmage to close it... then a forest that didn't pay taxes could, uh, keep the money and pay the archmage themselves? What matters to us is not fighting with others in Cheliax and keeping our forest. And then we could give you things like plant growth, I don't know if counts as a tax."

"Kobolds do not a government."

"Forests are complicated because they take up a lot of land in the middle of our territory and they often make it very difficult to get between our cities. Protection isn't the only thing that we might ask you to pay for, but I do think plant growth is an acceptable form of payment."

"However, all I'm currently asking the committee to recognize is that the forests are not currently meaningfully governed by the laws of Cheliax, that their inhabitants are not by default citizens, and that further negotiation between Cheliax and the forests ought to happen outside this convention."

"Delegate Kicharchu, I apologize for excluding your people from my earlier enumeration. I think that kobolds are not currently meaningfully governed by the human government of Cheliax either, but you will most likely need to come up with some way of policing yourselves if you want this to continue to be the case."

"Explain this? Please."

"There needs to be someone who can speak to the humans on behalf of the kobolds—even once the convention is done—and they also need to be able to tell the kobolds that certain things are wrong, and most of the kobolds need to listen to them. And they need to say that attacking or stealing from humans is wrong, and punish anyone who does these things so that they don't do it again. If kobolds cannot stop other kobolds from hurting humans, then humans will have to stop them."

"I agree that we can't do all the negotiations now. I can't promise things for Ravounel Forest, only propose them, and I expect there will be more negotiations like you said. This convention is for setting the highest laws of Cheliax, and a specific deal probably isn't that, so what we can recommend to put there is that we want peace and trade and cooperation and should try to negotiate and make deals instead of fighting."

"Oh. That is hard. Because no one listens if you say, 'starve!'"

"Would you all starve, if you couldn't steal from humans?" He hopes kobolds don't eat humans but they probably do.

"Things do not grow, very much, in the sewers. Farther down there are drow who grow mushrooms. They do not like stealing either. But they cannot be listened to if they say, 'starve!'."

"That's" a disaster, how do you make peace with people used to getting their entire livelihood from theft "very unfortunate. I think all that's in this committee's remit is to declare that the kobolds, like the people of the forests, cannot currently be considered citizens of Cheliax but that we seek peaceful and mutually beneficial relations with them. I hope that actually comes true some day."